Blog entries for "Opera"

Plácido Domingohas decided to retire the role of Conte di Luna from his repertoire and has therefore cancelled all respective performances in Berlin, Milan and Salzburg. Fortunately, it will still be possible to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Plácido Domingo’s Salzburg debut with a gala concert at the Festival.

What unites Cleopatra, Norma, Cenerentola and Iphigénie? Cecilia Bartoli creates studies of moving fates with passion. An interview with Cecilia Bartoli about her role debut in the title role of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride.

The Salzburg Festival regrets to announce that Luc Bondy finds himself unable to direct the production of Wolfgang Rihm’s Die Eroberung von Mexico for reasons of scheduling as well as personal ones. At the same time, we are happy to announce that we have been able to convince Peter Konwitschny to take on this production as director.

Japan and Austria, Kawasaki and Salzburg – two art-loving countries, two twin cities. Cultural exchange through Public Screenings: on Sunday, December 7, Kawasaki, a metropolis of millions close to Tokyo, showed the 2014 Salzburg Festival’s production of Der Rosenkavalier on a large-format public screen – befitting during the anniversary year of its composer.

Today the Bauprobe (mock-up set rehearsal) for W. A. Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro took place at the Haus für Mozart. Following the working model by set designer Alex Eales, the Salzburg Festival workshops built the Bauprobe sets on a scale of 1:1.

Masters and servants, the powerful and the powerless, oppression and protest – these binary oppositions provide the themes of the opera and drama programmes of the Festival in 2015. Reconciling people to that inequality – which is reflected not only in wealth and poverty, liberty and constraint, but which determines all social conditions, even the most personal of relationships – appears to have been a challenge as urgent as it is insoluble throughout the ages.

The 94th edition of the Salzburg Festival began with a highly atmospheric, sold-out Ouverture spirituelle. The overwhelming rendition of the Vespro della Beata Vergine by John Eliot Gardiner at the Cathedral and the concert featuring Mozart’s final symphonies with Nikolaus Harnoncourt were early highlights of an immensely successful Festival season which attracted more than 270,000 guests.

Helga Rabl-Stadler, President of the Salzburg Festival, and Hartwig Löger, Chief of UNIQA Austria, discuss the social responsibility of cultural education for future generations and their joint efforts on behalf of the children’s and youth programme of the Salzburg Festival.

Due to an acute infection of the bladder and respiratory tract and very high fever, Plácido Domingo has been forced to withdraw from the performances of Il trovatore on August 18, 21 and 24, 2014. Artur Ruciński will perform the role of Conte di Luna in his place.